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Caturday Reads: Murder, break-ins and a sleuthing cat make Cat With a Clue a winning read


Cat With a Clue

A Bookmobile Cats Mystery

by Laurie Cass

Berkley Publishing Group

NAL

Mystery & Thrillers

Pub Date 02 Aug 2016

Review

Murder, mysterious break-ins, and a gregarious and clever cat (Eddie) make Cat With a Clue a thrilling addition to Laurie Cass’s feline friendly mystery series. I have enjoyed all of the Bookmobile Cat Mysteries, and Cat With a Clue is no exception. The recurring characters are well developed and Chilson possesses its own unique charm. Eddie of course is a scene-stealer in only the way a cat can be. If you share your home with a cat (or several), you will find Eddie’s antics familiar. Minnie is a good librarian and a great amateur sleuth, but it is her interactions with Eddie that bring more than a few smiles.

In Cat With a Clue, murder hits close to home - in this case a body is found in the library, stabbed with a box cutter. A slew of break-ins follows, with the library and other local stores being targeted. Strangely, despite the damage nothing is stolen and the damage is too minimal to be the result of vandalism. Asking questions comes naturally to Minnie, as the victim was found in the library and Minnie knew her great-aunt.

There was only one thing that irritated me about Cat With a Clue. Through the novel, the library board was interviewing for the position of library director. Residents and library employees alike kept asking Minnie to apply. I wasn’t sure which irritated me more - the repetitive requests or `Minnie’s reticence and half-hearted excuses. My guess is that everything was done this way so that there would be someone new to murder in one of the next books. Still, the repetition was enough for me to downgrade Cat With a Clue from a 5 to a 4.

4/5

I received a copy of Cat With a Clue from the publisher and netgalley.com in exchange for an honest review.

—Crittermom

Description

The national bestselling author of Pouncing on Murder returns as librarian Minnie Hamilton and her rescue cat Eddie discover there's a true crime story unraveling in their own nonfiction section. . . .

Early one morning while shelving books in the library, Minnie stumbles upon a dead body. Authorities identify the woman as an out-of-towner visiting Chilson for her great-aunt's funeral. What she was doing in the library after hours is anyone's guess . . . but Minnie and Eddie are determined to save the library's reputation and catch a killer.

As rumors about the victim circulate through Chilson, the police are in a bind over a streak of baffling break-ins. Luckily, Minnie and Eddie are traveling the county in their bookmobile, and they'll stop at nothing to find the spineless killer before the final page is turned on someone else.

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